Italy arrests two alleged smugglers, arrived on Ocean Viking

Rome: Two Egyptian nationals were arrested on May 21 in the Italian port city of Ancona after arriving on the migrant rescue ship Ocean Viking, on suspicion of smuggling.

Police in the Italian port city of Ancona, in the region of Marche, arrested two Egyptian nationals, aged 22 and 23, on their arrival at the port on suspicion of smuggling. Both arrived the same day on the Ocean Viking migrant rescue ship, which was carrying 276 migrants onboard. The two were found in possession of the necessary instruments for navigation at sea and a satellite telephone, as well as telephone devices with SIM cards. They were placed in the local Montacuto jail.

Ancona investigators say that the migrants paid large sums of money to organisations in Libya, where the boats had left from, to pay for the sea crossing towards Italy. After spending several days in overcrowded safe houses on the Libyan coast, they were transported via land to the beaches from which they departed and there, once loaded onboard the vessels by armed and masked men, they travelled for hours before reaching the open sea.

There they were flanked by makeshift vessels by other “smugglers” who took them onboard and then took a route towards the Italian coast. The journey lasted about 40 hours before they were rescued by the Ocean Viking, which took them to Ancona.

The migrants that disembarked were taken to a building where police took photos of them, identified them, and lodged the minors. The procedures lasted over 10 hours. Not all the requests for international protection made by those onboard were accepted and police commissioner Cesare Capocasa issued orders for six of them to leave Italian territory immediately.

The migrants were from several different countries: 152 from Eritrea, 45 from Ethiopia, 39 from Pakistan, 27 from Egypt, seven from Bangladesh, two from Guinea, one from Morocco, one from Palestine, one from Somalia, and one from Sudan.

All were rescued in the open sea on May 17 after leaving the Libyan coasts on May 15. Among them were 95 minors — three under age one, six between ages 1 and 4, two between ages 5 and 13, and 84 between the ages of 14 and 17 — as well as a pregnant woman.